Playing Tourist

I have finally gotten to do some sigh-seeing in my adopted country. On a recent break from school a friend and I spent a few days in Vung Tau, a resort town a couple of hours from here. We booked a hotel before we left, but because we didn't know the area, we booked a little further from the beaches than we wanted to be. We traveled to Vung Tau on a hydrofoil which makes several trips each day. It took a little over an hour to get there, but sadly, we could not see out of the windows very well. I must admit that I slept most of the way there, waking up shortly before we pulled in to the boat landing.

The entire town is pretty well a tourist resort area. I had heard that there were three beaches, but truthfully, there were many more than that. Our hotel was within walking distance from the boat landing several restaurants, some tourist attractions, and Front Beach. We took a taxi to the hotel and rested, then went out for a walk of discovery. The most interesting thing we found was cable cars that would take passengers to a small resort on top of one of the mountains in the town. We did not take advantage of this as I am unable to ride in cable cars. We did find Tommy's Bar and Grill, where we had lunch and dinner the first day. The food was okay, but my biggest problem was in getting them to bring me a large glass of unsweetened milk. And if the food was okay, the margaritas were wonderful.

The nest day we went walking again after breakfast at Tommy's. We walked for a couple of hours, and saw fishers emptying their nets at Front Beach. This is not a beach where I would want to swim, because of all the boats that are in the area. There is a lovely park beside the beach that we strolled through. We found a lovely little bakery/ bistro for lunch, and in the afternoon hired a car and driver to take us to Long Hai Beach, about 15 km away. this was a much better beach. We rented chairs and I promptly fell asleep for most of the afternoon, not having slept well the night before. the bed I was sleeping in was not good for my poor back.

On our last day, we booked a car and driver for the afternoon and he showed us the sights around Vung Tau.At this point I was so tired from another sleepless night that all I really wanted to do was sleep. He took us to Giant Jesus, the second tallest statue of Jesus in the world. It stands on top of a mountain, and you can climb the 139 steps inside and walk out on Jesus' arms for a panoramic look at the area. My friend Freda climbed up to the statue but I didn't. You can look on You Tube to see what it looks like from Jesus' arms. We also saw some other beaches and the Vung Tau market, which is much bigger than it appears. This is a place that I will be going back to from time to time when I need to feed my soul, as it seemed to me as soon as I arrived there that I had come home to a place I'd never been to before.